Rise Light & Power on Tuesday presented a vision for making its Ravenswood Generating Station in New York City a renewable energy hub that can integrate offshore wind and upstate wind and solar into the city’s grid.
Ravenswood is currently a 2,050-MW generator located on a waterfront site in Long Island City, Queens, providing more than 20% of New York City’s local generation capacity.
The long-term redevelopment plan includes retiring the plant’s Big Allis unit and other 1960s-era fossil units. The plan for Renewable Ravenswood further includes repurposing existing infrastructure to connect thousands of megawatts of offshore wind, as well as new wind, solar and other clean energy resources from Upstate to New York City’s grid. The vision also calls for the deployment of large-scale battery energy storage on the facility site and repurposing Ravenswood’s river water intake system to provide clean thermal energy to nearby communities.
The company, which is owned by LS Power, said that if approved by regulators, the redeveloped site would provide renewable power for more than 2 million New York homes, as well as clean heating and cooling for up to 15,000 local residences.
“New York City has for too long relied almost exclusively on fossil fuels to power the city. Our future demands innovative and reliable clean energy solutions, and we will deliver just that with our bold move to retire Ravenswood’s 1960s-era fossil fuel units and transition to a Renewable Ravenswood in its place,” commented Clint Plummer, chief executive of Rise Light & Power.
The plan will support New York’s efforts to accelerate the retirement of its fossil fuel facilities by 2030 and help the state reach its climate targets, the company said.
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